rday’s Toronto Symphony concert – ominously entitled “Knocking at the Hellgate” – at Roy Thomson Hall was the third and final event in this year’s New Creations Festival. However, it was the first of the three I attended – so I can’t conclusively say that the whole festival was disappointingly uneven. But alas, this concert was.

The best music of the evening came as a surprise, and with a touch of irony. After the TSO had played their way through a couple of orchestral pieces, a young man calling himself “Scratch Bastid” took to the stage with a table full of electronic gear, and proceeded to perform his Festival Remix.

In a review of the premiere of Schoenberg’s Verkälrte Nacht, back in 1902, a clever critic wrote that the piece sounded like someone had “smeared the score of Tristan und Isolde while the ink was still wet on the page.”

I can see what the writer was getting at. Indeed, I would even agree with him – if it were possible to disconnect his metaphor from its dismissive and condescending implications. (I think Verkälrte Nacht is a masterpiece.)

“Contemporary classical music?” To some, the phrase may sound like a contradiction in terms. But, believe it or not, classical music aspires to be a happening, up-to-date art form – laying claim to the place at the cultural table next to contemporary art, film and literature.

Eatock Daily

I'm a composer and writer based in Toronto – and this is my classical music blog, Eatock Daily.

Here you'll find musings and meditations, some reviews and the occasional rant – as well as some of the articlesI've written for Toronto’s National Post and Globe and Mailnewspapers, the Houston Chronicle, the Kansas City Star and other publications.